Editor's blog 29th October 2008: a galling error for Lord Darzi's hospital team

Hello, and welcome to Wednesday. HPI associate director Tom Smith has spotted a beauty of a story about a somewhat ill-attended Darzi session by a PCT.

Indeed, there seems to be no stopping Tom today, as he has also posted a very strong piece on the constrasting healthcare policy plans of the US Presidential candidates.

Meanwhile, today's Private Eye reveals a disturbing story about a piece of wrong-site surgery by the team at St Mary's (Health minister Lord Darzi's trust). A gynaecology patient's gall bladder was removed. This is obviously extremely depressing and worrying for the patient; bad for the trust's reputation; and a bitter irony given Lord Darzi's personal interest in patient safety - a major theme of High-Quality Healthcare For All.

To err is, of course, human. But wrong-site surgery, following the DH-approved WHO safer surgery checklist is  genuinely difficult to understand.

It's a belting story for the ever-reliable Eye, and needs to remind us all that the Hippocratic Oath says 'primum non noscere' for a good reason.

And finally, the recent fuss over broadcasting buffoons Johnathan Ross and Russell Brand has been instructive. The relevance to health policy is admittedly tenous - but both induce hypertension and rectal discomfort among the discerning, such as readers of this site.

It seems that this particularly crass example of these gentlemen's work has awoken the general public to their disagreeablility.

I've always found the presence of this pair in broadcasting has served the same proxy function as people who wears a baseball cap backwards: a time-saving discernment indicator that I don't need to know more about them - ignorance is bliss, and what they present, I don't need. As ever, the Daily Mashsums it up well.